Rookie May Not Be Perfect, but He Provides Reason to Hope

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — The signature play of the start of the Geno Smith era took place late in the fourth quarter, with the outcome all but decided, on yet another Sunday afternoon when it appeared the Jets would lose a game they should have won.

Fifteen seconds remained on the game clock. Fifty-five yards stood between the Jets and the end zone. Smith, their rookie quarterback, their default option, scrambled right, away from traffic, toward the sideline. He gained 10 yards.

The game would have ended soon afterward if not for Tampa Bay linebacker Lavonte David, who shoved Smith after both players crossed the sideline, a mistake that would cost the Buccaneers the contest. Nick Folk connected on a 48-yard field goal, the Jets stopped the return that followed, and their sideline spilled onto the field in celebration.

That play bolstered the first impression Smith gave the N.F.L. on Sunday: not great, but not bad, either. That play was fortuitous and improvisational and far from perfect. But it worked. It gave the Jets a chance to win.

Smith did what the incumbent, and now injured, quarterback Mark Sanchez did less and less the last two seasons. He inspired confidence. He played well enough, for long enough, to make you want to see more. (That should not be an issue, with reports swirling about the severity of Sanchez’s shoulder injury.)

In so many ways, Smith embodied this Jets team, at least during Sunday’s unexpected 18-17 triumph. He had a bumpy spring. He fell to the second round of the N.F.L. draft. He bumbled through a crucial preseason appearance. He entered this game, then, with hardly any expectations, a new face among so many new faces, overlooked, expected to struggle, discarded and dismissed.

He did not leave the field Sunday a member of a Super Bowl contender. But he gave Jets fans what have become unfamiliar feelings: confidence and hope in the team’s starting quarterback.

Smith threw for 256 yards against a Tampa Bay defense that revamped its secondary this off-season. He led the Jets with 47 rushing yards, at a 7.8-yards-per-carry clip. He scrambled and slid and threw on the run, under duress, down the field.

At times, he performed his best Sanchez impersonation. He fumbled near the Jets’ end zone, which set up Tampa Bay’s second score. He overthrew a check-down pass, designed for maximum safety, into the arms of an opponent.

Still, Smith gave the Jets an offensive dimension that Sanchez, even at his best, cannot. Look at the prominent offenses that incorporated the zone-read option last season: San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, all playoff teams, all teams with mobile quarterbacks. How often those teams run is less important than the threat that they can run when they feel like it.

For an offense like the Jets’, with a Super Bowl most valuable player in Santonio Holmes and a bunch of unrecognizable targets at receiver, Smith’s ability to scramble — even the idea that he may take off — helps everyone around him. That includes each of the nine targets he threw to Sunday. It gives them a little extra time, a modicum of extra space.

“I’ll tell you where he really helped us,” Coach Rex Ryan said. “He ran. He made some plays, and those plays helped us win the game.”

Too often last season when the Jets took the field with Sanchez under center, the question was less about whether he would make some sort of crippling mistake and more about when and how. Some of the best throws Smith made Sunday were the balls he tossed away, into the stands. On a drive in the fourth quarter, he found no open targets on second down. He threw the ball toward the cheerleaders on the sideline, and Folk kicked a field goal two plays later for a 15-14 edge.

Jets fans booed the offense earlier that series. They would not boo again.

Smith stepped behind the lectern after Ryan and played down his N.F.L. debut. He said some variation of “it’s not about me” roughly a dozen times. He said, “I don’t like to brag on myself.”

Reporters pressed his teammates about the scramble that ended with the flag and changed the game. Smith insisted he believed the Jets could win when they took over 80 yards from the end zone with 34 seconds left. He told tight end Kellen Winslow and guard Willie Colon he needed just a little extra time.

“We’ll find a way,” he told them.

He found Winslow for a 25-yard gain. He scrambled away from traffic and drew the day’s most important yellow flag. He set up the game winner.

“It’s not a movie,” Colon cautioned in the locker room. “It’s not ‘Remember the Titans.’ It’s not like a Disney, miracle-type thing. It’s one win, and we’ve got a lot of games left.”

Colon is right about that and wrong about that, too. Because although it was only one game and although Smith did not remind anyone of Peyton Manning, he did seem like a better alternative to what Sanchez showed the last two seasons. Jets fans have seen that show before. They are not sure what they will get with Smith. But they want to find out more.

Later Sunday, the locker room almost empty, Smith tugged on his street clothes. A handful of teammates remained, giddy about the win. Sanchez’s locker was empty save for a single hanger on the rack. Maybe it meant nothing. Or maybe it was symbolic.

Either way, it was a win.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D5 of the New York edition with the headline: Rookie May Not Be Perfect, But He Provides Reason to Hope. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe